Recent buzz about the gPhone being designed by the ADG (Ammunition Design Group) of San Fransisco may or may not have been confirmed by the honchos of the company, but what is almost certain is Google’s unmistakable ambition to enter the mobile web space in a big way. Typically, in a ‘Google style’, they want to bring in a game-changing power play. A play that will tilt the market in it’s favor much the same way it has done in the field of internet advertising. It has created such a strong force there that even Bill Gates had to praise it as a ‘very nice revenue stream’.

So if it really has to be the ‘Google’ way, the rumor about g-phone being the centerpiece of it, does not sound convincing. There is a philosophical difference in how ‘Google’ thinks about its businesses than ‘Apple’. Google will never be the ’sexy machine’ company that will pull users into using it. Rather, it is known for working below the surface and capturing the whole ecosystem under its clutches. So whosoever makes any money in the system, a cut of it is always bound to be directed to Google’s coffer. Open Handset Alliance (OHA) or Open Social platform under the ‘Android’ program is a very definite indicator to that direction.

After Google bought Android in July 2005, Silicon Valley pulsed with gossip and speculation about what the search giant was planning. Everyone figured Apple had a phone in the works and assumed Google must be developing one too…but when Google finally broke its silence in early November, there was nothing about a gPhone. In stead there was a talk of building an alliance of 34 wireless companies including Intel & Sprint Nextel. This was how Google planned to shake up the nearly trillion-dollar global wireless market? A consortium?

Read more about this interesting ‘Wired’ article here.

Though the importance of the client device, supposedly named gPhone, is equally strategic to Andy Rubin, the original proponent of Android, now in Google; it should not be compared to the iPhone for fairness’ sake.

“The comparison between Android and the iPhone is unfair. The iPhone, with all its glorious UI experience, is a very closed and tightly controlled platform. The promise of Android is not a better user experience but rather an open experience - the sort of stuff that the mobile web really requires at this stage.”

Read the full story here.

With the power of openness, comes the loss of control. But that does not matter as long as the user can fulfill their goal seamlessly rather than worrying about compatibility all the time. Again from the Facebook experience, we have seen users are not willing to trust the third party applications in terms of security and traceability. Google will have to address that problem in a major way if Android has to become the de facto mobile web standard in the near future. They need to carefully trade off how much control to let go and how much to retain, in order to maintain sanity.

Web has changed from being only PC centric for a fairly long time. And since Mobile web, that is ‘always on’ and ‘always available’, scores a major point towards being ‘Cloud Computing Ready’, Google seems to have big plans to create completely new grounds of business with the launch of Android, particularly in PAAS (Platform as Service) or IAAS (Infrastructure as service). These new offerings will allow anyone to create and launch web applications on Google ‘App Engine’ hosting service. Even some applications can be custom made by the user communities for very narrow usage bands. And that just may be the beginning of a very different kind of Internet. Sounds too much like Web 3.0? We will have to wait and watch it play out to know the real worth of such ambitious vision…